Linux user share on Steam breaks 2% thanks to Steam Deck
Linux user share on Steam breaks 2% thanks to Steam Deck
A moment I've no doubt many Linux fans have been waiting to see. The Linux user share on Steam has smashed through the 2% barrier.
That’s actually lower than I thought it’d be. I sort of assumed it hovered in the 3-4% range. No clue why I did though lol
I think your number is from a statistic on share of desktop usage. But I could be wrong about that too.
that's the desktop usage which is different than steam userbase
Ahem... thanks to me.
I recently made Steam run on my Debian PC.
Win10 has one more year and I need to make preparations. Now I'm ready to ditch it to have more space for games.
"...Valve added a special Tux item into Team Fortress 2 only on Linux..."
That's all you need? Linux exclusive items in your games?
Bigger market share! Bigger market share!
What’s wild is that the EU went after Apple because of “gatekeeping” yet MS has a 96% market share on Steam and Steam itself basically owns gaming on PCs and it’s just crickets.
I think it’s wild Valve has built such a crushing monopoly on top of MS’s monopoly and no one seems to care. If you’re releasing a game outside of a console, you just can’t not ship on Steam and survive. What an age we live in.
The problem is that, at least for Steam, they're not a monopoly, nor are they necessary even within their market. Devs can and do distribute and/or market successful games without going through Steam and players can play games without ever getting Steam. I mean, if we were to take what I'd estimate are the most popular games right now:
- Roblox - only a dedicated storefront/launcher
- Minecraft - Up until recently, only a dedicated storefront/launcher, even now, not Steam
- Fortnite - Originally only dedicated launcher, built a storefront off of that, still not Steam
- Counter-Strike 2 - Steam
- CoD - Not Steam? I think? Honestly its been such a mess in publishing I don't know.
- League of Legends - Only a dedicated storefront/launcher
- Valorant - Only a dedicated storefront/launcher
- GTA V - On Steam
- Apex Legends - On Steam
- Overwatch 2 - popularized off Steam, turned to Steam after massive mismanagement butchered the game
Its absolutely possible to launch and maintain a successful game off Steam, and people have and continue to do so. Even exclusively talking about 3rd party storefront/launcher combos, theres a lot of options. Steam its just popular because its not only worth using (a bar most of the competition already fails to pass) but offers a lot both to users and developers from cheap, effective marketing, to tools to support Linux, to better controller support.
Here are the Call of Duty series games that are on Steam:
- Call of Duty
- Call of Duty 2
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
- Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 (the older one)
- Call of Duty - World At War
- Call of Duty - Black Ops (and notably, there is a separate game ID for the macOS Edition)
- Call of Duty - Black Ops II
- Call of Duty - Black Ops III (which has very good Steam Workshop Support!)
- Call of Duty - Black Ops Cold War
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (the newer one)
- Call of Duty - WWII
- Call of Duty - Vanguard
- Call of Duty - Modern Warfare Remastered
- Call of Duty - Advanced Warfare - Gold Edition
- Call of Duty - Ghosts
- Call of Duty - Infinite Warfare
- Call of Duty - Modern Warfare II, Modern Warfare III (both the newer ones), and Warzone
I’m not talking about billion dollar studios. I’m talking about indie devs. And Steam is 100% a monopoly regardless of how the nerds on Reddit and here feel about Valve. They are not your friends; they are a business. Moreover, they take a 30% cut and no one has ever batted an eye, not even today. Everyone went after the Apple App Store.
Their success has been to convince gamers they are friends. That’s all. Apple on the other hand garners insane antipathy from the public.
It’s wild how public perception ignores facts.
Plenty of games succeed without steam tho. Fortnite for example.
Plenty. Lists one. One that is powered by a multi million dollar company. Got it.
MS wasn't designated a gatekeeper in the EU Digital Markets Act? 😮